Too Few (likable) Women at the Top

Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. If you haven’t heard about her new book, Lean In, you’re missing out. Her fifteen minute TED talk gives a recap. At 7 minutes 30 seconds in she cites a Harvard Business School case study, which you can listen to her describe, or read my summary below the video.

The summary: The professor running the case distributed nearly identical text to two groups of students. One group was led to believe the protagonist of the case was a man; the other, a woman. Both groups agreed the protagonist was competent, but men and women of the first student group wanted to hang out with the male protagonist, whereas men and women of the second student group weren’t sure they’d want to work for the female protagonist. To sum it all up, in Sandberg’s words, “Success and likability are positively correlated for men, and negatively correlated for women.”

See the full talk and comments here. (If you’re interested, you should watch the full talk.)